(December 2, 2015 at 12:58 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Look, you think you did a good thing, but you need to understand that in the absence of hard evidence, there are many other interpretations of the situation, and in most of them, you look like a creep or a busybody. I don't blame the person for blocking you on bit. Females online have to deal with a lot more bullshit than us guys do in terms of creeps hitting them up out of nowhere, and no doubt you looked to her exactly like one of those guys.
Exactly.
My dad thinks of himself as some kind of do-gooder road-warrior and when he sees a car driving around without their lights on he'll flash his high-beams at them, tail gate them, honk at them, drive up along side them and try to engage them while we're all going 40 MPH... To him, he's doing a public service. To the person in the other car, for all they know, he could be an unhinged lunatic with massive road rage trying to pull them over and start a fight.
I've seen (as in, been in the car with him) when someone cut him off and he laid on his horn at them - and then five seconds later starts tail-gating them, flashing his lights and pulling up along side them trying to get their attention to tell them to turn on their lights. Talk about a mixed message! The person in the other car didn't engage my dad when he did this because they probably assumed he was being aggressive, flipping them off, yelling and screaming in his own car or whatever. They stared straight ahead and didn't engage him, which made HIM really upset because he was just trying to make sure they turned on their lights!
My point is, a person's interpretation of their own actions is certainly not to be discredited. I think you, Brian, thought you were doing a service to people by, as you put it, "smoking out a scammer." To this other person, who may have just created a facebook account for all you know and that's why it was blank (there are people out there who still don't have facebook accounts), your actions may have seemed aggressive or hostile. For all you know, the reason this person had a blank facebook page was because they had to shut down their previous account due to prior harassment issues. Or maybe they were creating a sock account so they could join groups and post things that they were uncomfortable with their other FB friends seeing.
I don't know the circumstances around this person's account, but neither, really, do you. You made an assumption about this person and barreled ahead determined to "smoke out the scammer" when you haven't provided us, in your OP, with any reason to assume that this person was, indeed, a scammer (did she ask for your personal information?). And are now getting upset when people are pointing out that you made an unjustified assumption. Having a female name, posting a cougar-esque photo and not immediately responding to someone's friend request does not automatically make someone a scammer.
In your OP, you are coming off as the guy with road rage not the guy who is just interested in road safety.
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
